


Beneath the Stars

by foxjar



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Amnesia, Anal Sex, Angst, Bottom Kurusu Akira, Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Canon, Romance, Supernatural Elements, Top Kitagawa Yusuke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:11:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26330164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxjar/pseuds/foxjar
Summary: In a desperate attempt to remember the man he has forgotten, Yusuke paints him.Up in that attic — with the hot air from the heater, the snowflakes sticking to the window, and the man who loves him — Yusuke is home.It feels like a fantasy. More dream than fact. He rushes through the snow-choked streets to his dorm, out of breath when he's finally made it inside. Once more he sets up the painting on his easel, the canvas ready for another round whenever Yusuke is, for the shapes to be carved out of nothing.
Relationships: Kitagawa Yusuke/Kurusu Akira
Comments: 6
Kudos: 82
Collections: Darkest Night 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KelpieChaos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KelpieChaos/gifts).



The canvas is ready. It sits perched atop his easel, primed and begging for color.

Yusuke isn't ready. Despite being halfway through his second semester in university, he's still unsure of himself. His confidence wavers, as predictable as the coming tide but just as shaky.

Everything in his dorm room is the color of bone — the walls, floor, desk, fridge — except for his easel and bedframe. The solid wood frame hangs from the wall, connected on three sides. Beneath it, he crams dozens of sketchbooks and supplies, with room to spare.

He had to leave almost everything else behind in Tokyo. Half a dozen radishes are growing in a container on the windowsill. Taped to the walls are a multitude of sketches he has done over the years: self-portraits, lobsters, unsuspecting passersby, a man in glasses smiling.

Most of Madarame's assets were left in the care of one of his mistresses, Tomomi, and although she offered to store his belongings until he returned, Yusuke had refused. He didn't have much to his name, anyway, and he figured downsizing would be good for him. He could fill his room with new trinkets again, much like he'd done with his dorm back at Kosei. There wasn't anything back in Tokyo that he couldn't live without.

Every few weeks, Tomomi forwards his mail to him. A few months after he first arrived at university, he received a letter. The envelope was handwritten. His fingers brushed the name, tracing the strokes, but he could not recall knowing the person. Was it a fan of his work? Did Yusuke even have fans like this?

Yusuke had been on his way out when he checked the mail, so he just tucked it under his bed, like so many of his other possessions. If his bedframe weren't attached to the wall, these letters would be what holds him up as he sleeps. His foundation.

The letters kept coming for a while; there are nearly a dozen beneath the bed now. At one point, the person writing the letters was incessantly calling Tomomi, even taking their obsession to the next level by visiting her personally.

"This man keeps saying he wants to see you," she had told Yusuke over the phone. "Or to at least give him your new phone number. He said his name was —"

It didn't matter. Yusuke told her that he didn't know him, and she ended up contacting the police. If Tomomi has received any more letters, she hasn't sent them Yusuke's way.

And still his canvas remains empty. He knows what he wants to paint — the emotions bubble up in his chest, threatening to choke him — but he doesn't know how. Yusuke lacks the words for whatever anxiety it is plaguing him this time.

Frustration. Disappointment. Loss of motivation. It is all of these things and more.

It started getting cold back in December. The heating bill is covered with his housing fees, but it never seems to be enough. His dorm is at the corner of the building, with two walls facing the outside, closing in on him. The snow started back in December, too, but it was only mildly more intense than Tokyo at its yearly worst.

It snowed seven days in December. One day, on his way back to the dorm, he ended up walking behind two of his colleagues. The woman had on a pleated skirt and thick leggings, her hair a curtain of dark brown against her puffy jacket; the man wore a scratchy looking scarf and a lopsided grin.

When the man remarked on the temperature, the woman had laughed.

"I don't think you know real cold," she teased. "This is nothing."

Yusuke had been in classes with them for nearly a year at that point. He still doesn't know their names. The thought of learning them makes his chest hurt, squeezing and kneading.

The woman had been right. The new year brought snow with it, rolling in sheets across the campus. When Yusuke tries to paint, his arms ache from the cold rather than strain. The elements are at war with his art.

What is he without his art? When inspiration leaves him, what is left of him?

The tiny fridge beside his easel hums. Outside, the wind billows and sends snow blowing against the glass.

He starts his painting off with a soft shade of gray, like snow after it has started to melt, mixing with dirt and turning to muck. The canvas itself doesn't help him along, as it used to; he cannot discern any images on its surface. Not a hint, not a glimmer. Another glob of gray joins the first, darker this time.

No matter how long it takes, he will force out whatever is packed inside him.

Slowly, the painting starts to take shape. Its color range is more akin to a charcoal sketch than his usual acrylic paintings, but this is where his heart is leading him for now. He carves at the canvas with his brush like it is marble; with time, the truth will be revealed.

The first sign of life is an eye. Oval and sparkly, as if having recently wept. He hadn't intended to paint a person — or had he?

He leaves the caricature of a human eye alone for the night. In the morning, the image starts to take shape in his head. His dreams have kept his mind busy, slowly weaving together the features of this entity, both known and unknown. While the fog hasn't entirely dissipated, it's beginning to clear.

After the first eye comes a second. He was right: they are sad, mournful eyes. Even though he had forced a dull gray upon the canvas, he knows these eyes to be a steely gray. His intuition hasn't led him astray.

Then comes the curve of the cheekbones, the slope of the nose. He knows this face well — almost better than his own. How many times has it smiled at him, laughed with him?

He doesn't sketch out the face, nor does he plan it out. The features are a little lopsided, too far apart in some places, and too bunched together in others.

But this person is beautiful, whoever they are. From the cheeks, his brush moves down the jaw and across the chin. He's dipping into more colors now, drawing from his memories: cream and rose beige. A glint of sparkling silver for the eyes.

The style of the painting is coming out with a mix of realism and the blocky style he often uses to paint people. He's painting as he sees the person in his head, as their visage is slowly uncovered, but his own style can't help but creep in.

Every night, he wishes goodnight to the painting in his head, as if it could hear his words. As if paint strewn upon a canvas in a white room could understand anything.

* * *

Carting the painting along with him to class is a mistake. There aren't assigned workspaces, but everyone has chosen their personal easels, anyway. Yusuke's is in one far corner of the room, farthest from the entrance and closest to the wall.

At first he keeps it in the small cubby neatly labeled with his name, but he always has to brush by others to get to it. Other people. He clutches the painting to his chest, the eyes of the other students boring into his back, their curiosity drilling into him.

When he sets up the painting during a break, no one is looking at him. They are chatting with friends, tucking their supplies into art bags and cases. They slink from the room, wanting to taste a breath of the winter air before they return to their easels.

No one looks at Yusuke at all.

The professor is setting up for the next portion of the class, a fresh pad of newsprint clipped to her easel for the demonstration. Before long, everyone will crowd around it, breath and bodies warm as they huddle together.

Yusuke's painting will have to be stuffed in its cubby, set aside once again.

Once the professor finishes setting up, she makes her way around the classroom, peering at everyone's work. No one is here to see her prying eyes — no one but Yusuke. She never lingers around any single easel for more than a few moments, nodding her head and tapping her crossed arms.

Until she gets to Yusuke's.

"This is amazing, Kitagawa," she says.

Her eyes dart across the canvas, corner to corner, then back again, ogling the painting as if it were a hunk of meat at the grocery store. She clutches her hand to her chest, her heels clacking against the floor when she steps back to appreciate the piece more fully.

All the while, Yusuke's hands shake. A strange gurgling sound builds up in the back of his throat. Part of him wants to drape himself over the painting, wet canvas be damned.

_It belongs to me._

_He belongs to me._

_Mine._

"How striking," she murmurs. "Realistic and yet almost uncanny. The eyes in particular draw me in. The glasses too, rendered with such detail. And the lips, ready to be kissed. Or yearning, perhaps? Or is it the viewer who is yearning?"

Yusuke looks back at his painting, and he can see the truth behind her words. If he wasn't yearning, would he have become this obsessed with working on it, his muscles straining every day from the sheer dedication?

"Very intimate," the professor continues. "There's a tremendous amount of affection in this piece."

 _Yes,_ Yusuke thinks. _But for whom?_

A laugh. A cat jumping up on his lap, its claws kneading at his thighs before curling up for a nap. Too-hot coffee on his tongue, a concerned voice reaching out for him, but it's a hand that touches him. Just the fingertips, nails brushing against his skin.

 _Is that the story behind this painting?_ _Is that what is driving me to create?_

After class, he snaps up the buttons of his jacket and heads outside, canvas dry and safely wrapped up, tucked into his art bag. It's snowing again; the sky is the color of graphite smudged to oblivion, and the ground is covered in sheets of white. Some of his classmates are rolling snowballs and tossing them at each other, laughing.

Yusuke might have kissed him once when it was snowing.

Bundled up beneath a thin comforter, cuddling around a small space heater. Icy fingers on numbed skin. Floorboards creaking beneath them as he leans over, a smile tickling against his lips when they kiss. And then Yusuke pushes him to the floor, that ever-present smirk gnawing at him. Legs wrap around his hips, pulling him closer.

Up in that attic — with the hot air from the heater, the snowflakes sticking to the window, and the man who loves him — Yusuke is home.

It feels like a fantasy. More dream than fact. He rushes through the snow-choked streets to his dorm, out of breath when he's finally made it inside. Once more he sets up the painting on his easel, the canvas ready for another round whenever Yusuke is, for the shapes to be carved out of nothing.

Yusuke doesn't know if he'll ever be ready. He crawls into bed, unsnapping the buttons of his coat and shrugging out of it but not entirely. He drapes it over himself like an extra blanket not because he's particularly cold — he is; it burrows into his skin and bites at his bones — but because somehow, he knows the man he's painting loved this coat. He adored the way it made Yusuke's body look, his waist cinched and hips dramatically flared with the dark teal-colored fabric.

It's an effort to grasp the images in his head that he doesn't have words for, to curl up against them, but somehow it just makes him lonelier. They remain in his head, vibrant and lush, while he's still out here alone in his white, white room.

Even in the darkness, he sees it. Bereft of color, devoid of intimacy. The sketches tacked to the wall aren't enough to make this his home; they are lipstick upon a corpse. For show, for grief.

In the room beside his, he hears the occupant scuttling about. Moving boxes. After a few moments of pondering, they rearrange them again. Yusuke imagines they are trying to stack the boxes in the most aesthetic manner possible, a tower that touches the ceiling.

It's the humanity of it that keeps him awake. The sounds of life remind him that he isn't physically alone, not really. It's just in every other sense of the word.

When he first arrived here, he had multiple room options to choose from. He could have had a roommate, or he could have had three, squished together with little room for anything other than bunk beds. But those dorms had their own kitchens in a separate room. Their own bathrooms. Those dorms were tempting based on the kitchen alone, but Yusuke decided against it.

He doesn't even know who he is anymore. How could he honestly share his face with another?

There's no one to come check up on him, no one to fuss over him. His fridge is empty. The planter housing his radishes remains on the windowsill, cradling them as the vegetables suck up their water. He worries they won't be getting enough sun, not with all these clouds.

Yusuke falls asleep thinking of his radishes, of the life he holds in his hands; and the man he loves, but can't seem to remember.


	2. Chapter 2

When Yusuke wakes up the next morning, the light streaming in through the windows is a dazzling white. He pulls on a fresh set of clothes and packs up his painting in his bag before heading downstairs. Although he hadn't had time to work on it the previous evening, it feels wrong to keep it packed away unless absolutely necessary. Like he's thrust a real, living person into the darkest cage imaginable. He knows what that's like, at least in part: being indebted to another person, thanking them for the scraps provided, and kneeling at their feet on the rare occasions he was allowed to see the sun.

Yusuke won't hide his painting — not from the light. People are another story.

The woman slinks up to him, nameless and half-forgotten, just as he's about to leave the dorm complex. She has to pull down her scarf to tell him that the university is closed today. Snow day.

"And with some luck, maybe we'll have a snow week." Her smile is genuine, as if she's joking with a close friend and not a man that she's barely interacted with over the past year.

Although her hair is tied back in a braid today, there's something about her voice that he remembers.

"I don't think you know real cold," she had said that day outside the dorm. It wasn't aimed at Yusuke, but maybe it should've been. She had been with a man, but Yusuke can't recall his name, either. Why is it so hard for him to associate faces with names now? Has he always had this difficulty?

Her hand is on his arm, as light as a feather. She's talking, telling Yusuke how much she admires his work in class. Why hadn't they spoken before today? They should have lunch together sometime.

Then they're in front of Yusuke's dorm, and she laughs again, the sound echoing through the hallway.

"What are you waiting for?" she asks.

Yusuke licks his lips. Her breath is warm, and she smells like flowers. It's been so long since he's let anyone in.

So very long.

He remembers exactly why once he's set his painting back up. His classmate lavishes him with praise — the shapes, color, composition — despite it being nowhere near finished.

Yusuke only set the painting up to let it breathe; he isn't looking for compliments. His fingers twitch, his skin an itchy, apprehensive mess.

When she steps closer to the easel, something snaps in him, that ever-winding knot inside him.

"Mine."

"Of course." She nods, confused. Who else would it belong to?

"Mine," he says again, stepping between her and the painting. Not because he's embarrassed about its current state — a seemingly endless work in progress — but because it's his and his alone.

He can't even manage a full sentence. "It belongs to me" might've been a little more clear. But, no, just "mine."

His colleague excuses herself, slipping her shoes back on at the door. Then Yusuke is alone with his painting again, just them and the glow of the snow outside and the radishes on the windowsill and the thing inside Yusuke, unwinding.

If his art could speak, what might it say? Would it thank him for creating it, this labor of love? Or would it detest him, cursing him for bringing it into existence?

Yusuke wants to be loved, to feel the rush of life, to be reminded daily that he is whole. Whoever he is and wherever he has come from, he is whole. So in the end, maybe it's better that his art can't speak. Maybe it's better for everyone that his secrets are kept hidden within layers of paint and within letters tucker beneath his bed, unopened and unread.

It's still bright outside when he lies down to sleep, his eyelids heavy. That same ivory glow. It washes over him, brushing into his dreams as a world of white. Such bleakness had always been his cage, hadn't it? The loneliness sprouts from the ground like an iron-wrought gate all around him, and he pushes on it to test its strength. It creaks and groans, but it refuses to budge.

After an eternity of nothingness comes the color, streaks across the otherwise empty sky. Blobs of color drip down, splattering across the ground, and suddenly the world is full of sounds and smells.

A flurry of dust in an attic. Hot coffee on his tongue, experimental and tangy but full of love. The rain on his skin, pelting him with such ferocity that no one can differentiate it from the tears streaming down his cheeks.

_What right do I have to forget any of this? To forget you?_

When Yusuke opens his eyes, he is no longer alone. The darkness curls itself around him, even as his eyes wet with tears. The mattress dips below its weight, and then it is leaning over him, an icy kiss upon his lips. Does it think this will help him remember? He reaches for it, clutching at what turns out to be its face. Where Yusuke touches, color blooms; life returns to the stillness.

Flushed cheeks, soft lips. The hard lens of a pair of glasses. He traces the frames with his fingers, tucks wisps of hair behind ears he can barely make out.

"It is you," Yusuke whispers.

 _Yes,_ the darkness seems to reply. _It is I._

Clawed hands cup his face, but he doesn't twist away. Another kiss, another flash of memory: monsters. Running from them, sometimes running to them. The glint of treasure. The triumph at cradling it in his arms at last.

Then the claws are cutting through Yusuke's shirt, buttons be damned as they clatter to the floor. The remnants of his shirt are pushed aside and those agonizing hands are splayed across his chest, making his skin tingle. Teeth nibble at his lips, not enough to draw blood but almost enough to distract him from the ice on his chest, the hand dipping below the waistband of his pants. Fingers wrap around his half-hard cock and he gasps, hips bucking. He must still be dreaming, having slipped into the next chapter of his nighttime fantasy, and yet it feels so real.

Yusuke's head swims. He reaches for the being, the entity on top of him, pulling it down to lie against his chest.

A heartbeat, sure and strong.

A flash of gray. A glimmer of love.

The nameless one, the faceless one.

His name is on the tip of Yusuke's tongue. Why must it be so difficult to remember someone that he loves so much? The darkness of his beloved sits up in Yusuke's lap, nails scratching up his chest. When Yusuke touches his face, his hands shaking, he can feel the smirk, how his lips curl.

And then he's pressing Yusuke's cock against his ass, fitting their bodies together like he's done it a million times. Yusuke should know; he should remember. He sinks onto Yusuke as if the act alone could bring his memories back, could retrieve them in a wave.

The heat, the tightness. Yusuke rocks his hips, and the being lets him. Their lips mesh, aflame with uncertainty.

 _Please remember,_ every kiss begs.

Every moment makes Yusuke shudder as he rocks his hips into darkness. So beautiful. Both fire and ice. He can feel the sweat in his hair when he pulls him back down to lie on him, can hear the raspy moans on his lips.

_Please._

Coffee and dust and kisses beneath the moonlight, all wrapped into one. The fiercest love he has ever known, lying on top of him, even now.

The darkness knows his name and moans it like the sweetest song. It's rough and garbled, but it's all his own, hot against his ear. No one else says his name like that. No one else loves him with a love more than love.

Light seeps into the room as snow begins to fall outside again, a shimmer of white across the walls. Yusuke didn't need the dim lighting to be able to tell who it is on top of him — the man he's been painting, plucked straight from the canvas and plopped right on his lap — but it doesn't hurt.

The man sits up, still moving his hips, languid and teasing. He brings Yusuke's hand up to his cheek, and when he brushes his skin with his thumb, it leaves a dark streak of charcoal. Yusuke's hands fall down his chest, feeling the way his body twists, the curve of his hips, the softness of his stomach. The charcoal follows him wherever he touches, marring the once clear skin.

Yusuke wants to tell him how beautiful he is — before it's too late, before he's gone again. But every time he tries, something distracts him: lips meeting, hips slamming down. It's as if the entity on top of him already knows; he doesn't want Yusuke's words. Not anymore. He just wants Yusuke's body, rocking against his.

When sunrise finally slips through the windows, will he disappear? Or will Yusuke be able to see him more clearly?

There's so much love in his chest, and he doesn't even know why. Yusuke squeezes the man's hips before he eases him onto his back. A glare flits across the lens of his glasses.

Yusuke touches his lips, his nose, his cheeks. The only word that he ever utters is Yusuke's name, and only that when he hits that spot inside him. His legs wrap around Yusuke's hips, his hands clutching at the sheets.

When Yusuke wakes up, if this really is a dream, the sheets won't have holes from where his sharp nails tore through the fabric. But it has to be a dream, doesn't it? Who else but the man of his affections could know about the uncertainties plaguing him?

Although this man might not want his words, Yusuke wants his. But no matter how many times Yusuke brushes his lips with his fingers, he still only manages to say his name, breathy and forlorn.

And yet it still feels so good to be inside him: the warmth, the tightness around the head of Yusuke's cock every time he rocks into him. So familiar, and yet he can't remember ever being intimate with someone like this. Not exactly.

But dreams don't have to make sense; they don't have to base themselves on reason.

His orgasm builds at the base of his cock, his knees shaking as his thrusts lose their rhythm. A name at the tip of his tongue as he fills him, his body jerking against him, the energy wrung from his muscles.

A —

So close and yet so far.

Yusuke slumps against him; the man doesn't disappear, and the dream doesn't end. They remain entwined in mystery, with the smell of charcoal dust tickling Yusuke's nose.

"Do you wish to kill me?" Yusuke muses as fingers brush through his hair, making his eyes water yet again. "Is it because I have forgotten you? You are so dear to me, and yet I cannot even remember your name. Why is that? Why must it be so difficult?"

Silence envelops him. Hands wrap around his throat, that same dusty charcoal smell wafting in the air. Sharp nails dig into his throat, just barely piercing the skin.

 _Such a strange dream,_ he thinks, right before his vision grows dark.

_How very strange._

* * *

The sky is gray when Yusuke pushes aside the curtains in the morning. The snow melted just as fast as it had come, but clouds still fill the sky, a threat of freezing rain. On the windowsill are his radishes, the leaves an earthy green. His only companions now.

Yusuke's painting is gone; not a trace of it remains. The easel that once propped it up holds not a single clue. His heart is heavy, but it's almost a relief.

All around him, the smell of charcoal. He's able to recall his dream from the night before with surprising clarity, and it should shock him that the holes torn through the sheets remain, but he doesn't know what to feel anymore.

Just the charcoal, choking his lungs. When he slips back into bed, the soles of his feet are covered in it. But there's nothing on the floor that he can see, not until he's kneeling on the ground.

It's beneath his bed; he feels the chalkiness with his fingers.

Peals of thunder make the walls tremble. The lightning flashes, a shock of brilliance, lighting up the otherwise dim room. And then comes the rain, tapping incessantly on the window, begging him to remember all that he has forgotten. A helpful reminder.

There's no need for that anymore. Yusuke is on his knees, reaching into the darkness beneath the bed to pull out the bundle of letters. He doesn't fear the darkness; it's leading him home.

As he sifts through the letters, he wonders why he hadn't thrown them away. Although he can be sentimental, clutching ephemera that he intends to weave into his art but might not ever get around to, he's never been much of a hoarder. He's never had the space for that, so why now, when he has a fraction of the room he had even at his Kosei dorm? It's never bogged him down this much emotionally, either. Grasping for the past even as it slips through his fingers as easily as water.

Yusuke doesn't recognize the return address on the first letter, but he tears it open, anyway.  
  


> Tomomi won't give me your new number or address, but she said she'll forward this letter to you.
> 
> I started university here. I assume you have, too. The last time we spoke, you were looking into schools.
> 
> I don't know why you won't talk to me, but I want you to know I'm not mad. A little frustrated, yeah, but I think you'd understand.
> 
> I miss you.

  
The name on the first letter is the same as the second: Kurusu Akira.

> I'm starting to think Tomomi just doesn't like me. She said she asked about me, and you told her you didn't know me.
> 
> But that can't be true. You wouldn't lie like that.
> 
> Unless it isn't a lie. Unless it's somehow become the truth.
> 
> It's hard to think that you might've forgotten me, but that's easier to accept than the alternative.
> 
> I miss you.

Yusuke's head hurts; his eyes throb. He's so close to the truth that he can taste its bittersweetness on his tongue.

> Do you remember the first time we went to the planetarium together? You were entranced. I just watched your face. You looked so happy. More than anything, I wanted to kiss you.
> 
> Then we stuck the star stickers up in my room. Do you remember? I couldn't help myself. It was rash, and I was scared, but I kissed you, anyway. You were quiet for a minute as you thought, and for a second I thought I was losing you, and then you said, "Please kiss me again."
> 
> I think those stickers are still there, right where we left them.
> 
> I miss you.

The memories are returning to Yusuke in waves; not all at once, but slow and sure. Unpredictable but determined.

Finally.

The dusty attic, the glowing star stickers.  
  
His name is Akira, and Yusuke loves him more than anything.

* * *

They spent the last year on opposite sides of the country, but they're here now at the midway point. Where it all began.

Tokyo is the same as Yusuke remembers it: bright, beautiful, busy. His memories are still returning, bit by bit. He remembers Leblanc, tucked away from the bustling streets. The smell of coffee and curry.

When he sees Akira sitting at the bar, he doesn't know what to say. He's wearing a tweed coat, long and gray; his hair the same ruffled black; his glasses steaming as he brings the coffee cup to his lips.

"Oh," Yusuke finally says once they're face to face. This is the man he's kissed, the man he's loved. He's spent weeks trying to recreate him with his art, and here he is in the flesh.

Akira nods, agreeing with his assessment of "oh" as if it's the key that holds the answer to all of life's questions. He takes Yusuke's hand, leading him up the creaky stairs, and he kisses him beneath the stars.

"What made you so afraid?" Akira asks, his fingers in Yusuke's hair. He's combing the tiniest tangles out of his hair for something to do with his hands, something to ground him, but Yusuke can feel the way his fingers shake.

Yusuke isn't the only one afraid. He can't imagine what Akira's been through this past year; despite knowing that Yusuke was out there somewhere, he didn't know how to reach him. His letters were, in a sense, thrown to the wind. If only Yusuke had read them sooner, maybe he could've eased just a fraction of Akira's pain.

"My memories are still fragmented," Yusuke explains. Or he attempts to — he still doesn't understand entirely, but he's been trying to make sense of it. Although he can't remember how they met, his memories of Palaces and the Phantom Thieves are coming back, a fresh coat of paint on his otherwise uneventful past. "Losing you cost me everything."

Akira's hands tighten in his hair. "But you didn't lose me. I left Tokyo, but I was still here for you. I didn't just drop all communication."

 _Like you did,_ his voice insinuates. But Yusuke can't blame him; although it wasn't intentional, that's exactly what happened.

Above them, the green glow of the stars. Around them, a year apart. Wasted. A year's worth of stories to tell each other, and a lifetime in which to tell them.

"Do you know what it was that helped me remember?" Yusuke asks. "It started with a painting of your eyes…"

Yusuke's first story of thousands; as many as there are stars in the sky.


End file.
